Allegiances
by constantinterruptions
Summary: "Kid, you don't need a team. We're a team of shinobi teams." A friendship between a little girl and a tailed beast.


Twenty years of being sealed within a teapot and this was it. His chance for escape and finally, freedom. With a roar and a wall of blue chakra which appeared like tongues of flame, the two tails, Matatabi, burst out of his prison in his sapphire glory amidst the chants of Kumo monks.

_No. _It screamed upon hearing the chants. _No. _The familiar sounding hymns which arose from their mouths trapped him in invisible steel chains, heeding his ascent into the limitless sky. _No._ His shriek once again soundlessly echoed. Its mismatched eyes, green and yellow, flicked around the darkness in fear. Around him was a familiar sight, seals, blood red, white wax candles which smelt of death. Thrashing in a panic, Matatabi strained against invisible bonds as the chanting grew to a crescendo. There was a girl, he noted through his panic, a small little girl, blonde and tiny, lying in the middle of the seals. Brown, rusty nails ran through her hands as her blood mixed with the seals red paint. _Not another host, not another prison_, screamed the Two tails before it was sealed. Spiraling in a vortex of red and blue and black, Matatabi felt the world rush against him through his mind, something wet and warm hit his face, matting against his fur before thankfully everything turned to black. Into the sweet, comforting arms of darkness he fell until he no longer realized he was falling.

"Hello?" the small voice of a child awoke him from his slumber. "Who are you?" the child asked from a distance, voice heavy with weariness and thickened by pain. Matatabi peered open his eyes and found his vulnerable form, lying prone amidst the darkness, his enclosure was created by a circle of translucent blue. Ice, he noted with fear, cold cold ice which would penetrate his soul and freeze him should he pass through. His green eye flicked in the direction which the child's voice had come from.

A little girl with light blonde hair and quiet dark eyes stared at him through the glow of his blue prison.

"Please get out" the little girl said in an even tone. Her stare was steadfast, her dark eyes locking with Matatabi's. Matatabi laughed, a booming chortle which echoed through the darkness of the abyss called his prison.

"Little girl," the two tailed beast smiled sadly through his circle of bars, "do I look like I chose to be here?" Circling around his prison, he pawed at the ground, his irritation was smiliarly imitated by the girl who began to pace around.

"Well I don't want you to be here," she replied, "I would like my body to myself." She finally stopped and sat down facing him. The little girl's hair was blonde but streaked with dirt and tangled with a lack of care, scuffed feet and a thin face with cheekbones so sharp they could cut glass. The girl looked like the typical sort of Kumo orphan he had seen over a millienia ago.

"I'm sorry." he replied apologetically, "maybe we can just get along then." The girl merely peered into his misshapen and discoloured eyes and nodded gravely. Silently, she stepped through the barriers of his prison and extended a hand towards his paw. Her small hands and lithe fingers tangled into his matted fur. A warmth which he had not felt in years coursed through his body and Matatabi knew that if he had hands and arms, he would probably have thrown them around the severe little girl.

The girl suddenly pushed herself back to look at him square in his mismatched eyes. "As long as you don't try to possess me," she announced solemnly. Matatabi almost laughed.

* * *

"My parents died during the war, two years ago," the girl told him with hooded eyes. It was her break from Anbu training and she needed it, he could feel the aches and pains in her joints which emanated out of her frail little body. He nodded quietly. Yugito was snuggled into his fur, curled into a small ball, such that his body curved around hers and could protect her. In five minutes, she would have to leave and he could no longer do so until she demanded for his presence.

He felt her weight shift from his fur and knew that she had stood up and was about to leave her inner sanctum, relieve herself of this dream. "Don't hurt yourself," he told her, his voice gravelly with age and a bit of emotion. The little girl stood up and nodded silently, without a second glance and left.

* * *

Yugito felt her body slam into the tree behind her. Chakra exhaustion had left her breathless and knees weak, she howled in pain. "Fuck you, Nomen." she shrieked, the twelve year old girl had learnt to curse and her sojourn with Matatabi who had lived once as a mercenary had taught her even more. The blank face of her mentor's mask merely stared back at her but the heat that seemed to emanate from the black figure made his lip curl.

"What are you doing?" The man in the Anbu mask shouted at her. She could feel something snap in her back and somewhere in her, a flare of fire or chakra spire inside. Calm down Ni, she told herself and the cat like creature within her which continued to hiss. "Keep sharp." he ordered her, as he fell back into the smoke fighting pose. Yugito shifted back into her feral stance, rising on her haunches she attacked, blue chakra like claws stretched out of her finger tips and she pounced upon her mentor.

He struck, a tanto shifted and struck her almost inches from her face. Her arm swung up, her claws scratched the blade of the tanto and almost broke it. She hissed and she could almost hear Matatabi laugh at her indignance. Nomen's hand slipped into different and familiar looking hand signals. Fuck, the girl breathed and she felt the internal clasps of her mind slip. Nibi, she whispered, go.

Matatabi laughed and let out a small breath. Yugito similarly did the same, her back straightened and tensed, her mouth opened in a large O. Fire spewed out of her mouth, tongues of flame in different colours, blue, white, green, red, yellow and orange, clashed against the sparks of white lightning her mentor had fired at her. Another breath and more tongues of fire burst out of her mouth, she rushed through the fire and towards Nomen, she could see the glint of his white mask in the unnatural light of her flames. A small smile came from her as she pushed out another entourage of fire on to his wooden face, she could hear the small sigh of fright from behind his veiled identity. A small no, before she burnt him into ash.

Thank you Nibi, she thought, before her body collapsed amongst the flames.

"Hey there kiddo," Matatabi smiled. He paced in his enclosure as the little girl approached.

"I think I passed out. Chakra exhaustion." she replied. Her face was ashen pale, "I think I killed Nomen again."

Matatabi laughed, "Kid, there will always be Anbu members to train you." He watched her little gold head nod in tiredness, chakra exhaustion had degraded her body to the extent of malnutrition. She was always silent when these things happened, you'd think that six Nomens later, she would have been absolutely fine. Two years ago, the little girl he had met was small and pale. Now the same little girl with the dark eyes had aged, her eyes had aged and though she had grown taller, she was skinnier than ever. "Look kid, it's difficult to find someone who naturally compliments me, you are the one in a million jinchuuriki."

"Ah," Yugito muttered and she moved towards him, once again moving past his blue prison. "Nibi, tell me a story," she murmurred quietly and her hands once again met his furred paws, fingers twining against fur. Her little hands began playing with his fur and he felt himself purring.

"When I was a soldier, we had this idiot called Toru. He was such an idiot, the sort that plays poker with explosive tags..." he began. Yugito's breathing slowed and her hands which were tangled in his fur, went slack. Matatabi smiled and went silent, with his head he nudged her closer into his fur.

* * *

He could hear her through the hollows of her eyes, he was taken aback. The room was dark and the light was dim with the glow of red candles. Chanting once again filled the air and for a moment he was brought back to the scene four years ago when he had been sealed into the eight year old girl. Black chains encircled her body and her hands, he could feel her foaming at her mouth, the strain that was coming from her body through the convulsions. Chakra once again flowed through the air, Matatabi was unsure if it was his or hers but its dark stench emanated through the room. He thought the she shrieked again, he coudl feel her eyes roll to hte back of her sockets and shake and convulse.

Suddenly, there was another shriek of pain. He watched as a knife was plunged into her hands, both of them, so that she was nailed to the seal, to her Kumo seal, to her , scarlet bloomed against her pale skin. Sharp dashes of black came across his vision and he suddenly recognized those knives. Trench knives, meant to unlock his power by agitating his chakra flow with more chakra. He roared, attempting to hold back any power which would overpower her body.

He could not just lose control. He had to for her. But he couldn't, green chakra enveloped against him and scoured his body. Pain and fear enveloped room was still dark, though he could see his control slipping, blue chakra and green fire was already bursting through her fingers.

"What the fuck?" he heard one member of the chant mumble, before strengthening the chakra he was chanelling into his host. He could feel himself slipping and when he finally did, he mumurmurred a small apology to his unhearing host.

"I'm sorry kiddo."

And everything went black.

When he came to, he saw her sitting right outside his prison. "You okay kiddo?" he asked, concerned for his host.

"Yeah aside from the busted kidney and the fact that Anbu just stabbed my hands," the girl drew her knees to her body, "I'm fucking peachy." He knew that she could never stand the extreme heat of his chakra, he knew that she could have died from him scorching and torching all her organs.

He mewled, his nose almost coming to touch the barrier. "I'm sorry, I shoud have controlled myself."

"Ni!" she snapped, "it's not your fault. They did this to us. They were the ones who strapped me down and chained me to the floor, they were the ones who stabbed my hands and forced you to open your chakra valves." Her face was still pale from exhaustion, her eyes though bright with anger, there was a fire in them he knew that she had no hope of controlling. "Why do we have to do this?" she asked breathlessly, tears finally appearing from the corners of her bright eyes, "Why us Ni?"

She reached a hand through the barriers and pressed it against his wet nose, a lone finger of hers curling the fur of his squashed face. "Well kid," he replied, "I'm a monster and you were just too special."

* * *

Matatabi had been a soldier once. He had been a nin for the Uchiha clan in Konoha though instead of a Kumo monster. And as part of the Uchihas, he had been a somewhat mediocre shinobi. Though having intimate knowledge of the standard Uchiha jutsus, he was never truly talented like the kid Madara who was rumoured to have a brilliant, a different sharingan. However, he was still Uchiha and he was still proud to be set apart from all those regular normal nameless clanless shinobi.

Then the day came when he had his birthright ripped away from him. In the midst of battle, some shinobi from the sand, a man with hair as brown and golden as the desert he came from ambushed him and ripped out his precious eyes. As blood streamed down his face, he could hear his enemy laugh with glee and place his sharingan, his red eyes surrounded by three black tomoe in a cylinder and flee. All he could do was to wait in the clearing, blood dripping like tears down his face, staining the forest floor a dark brown, for medic nin who would only click their tongues in derision.

He would soon get new eyes. Eyes which were not Uchiha, eyes which were as common as the grass. He heard that one of them came from a Senju and the other a dead Yamanaka. The two were great clans but there were not his Uchiha clan and although he howled in fury on the inside at his birthright lost forever to the sand, he was glad for sight and colour once again. Blue, green, yellow, he stared into the mirror and noted the colour of his shirt and his strange mismatched eyes.

When he finally met the sage, he completely disregarded the man. The sage was an old man, his stance withered by age, his muscles degraded by time and his eyes almost unseeing through their grey cataracts. Old man, he had told the sage, i am an unwanted son in my clan. The sage nodded silently. Why do they reject you, the sage asked. Because my eyes are different, he replied.

On god's green earth, we see the same things, the sage replied. And that was when he decided to follow the sage.

He left the clan of infinite sight for the man who proclaimed them to by myopic. And one day when standing watch over the sage, he realized that it was night, yet he could see the trees and the outlines of the leaves and grass almost as clearly as it had been day. It was a sudden gift that he kept close to his heart and never shared with anyone, not even the sage.

Fire can protect and fire can harm, the sage told him once. Hence he learned how to control it, through the jutsus of the Uchiha, he created his own techniques, his own waves of fire which stood like soldiers and walls to protect him from the terror and the fear of the world. The sage never said anything about his destructive inclinations, only smiled and gave more words filled with obfuscated meaning. Matatabi had listened and never truly understood them, returning back to his training.

The sage would one day die and Matatabi would find himself weeping his miscoloured eyes out over the old man's body and then his body exploding in a mix of blue chakra and red flames.

You killed him, he yowled to the men who had attacked the sage, you killed a man who never hurt another. Fire burst from his mouth and from his hands came claws of black flame. Through his spite and vehemence, he clawed and disemboweled the men who murdered his surrogate father. And when it was over, he found himself in limbo, half man, half spiteful cat. Closing his eyes, he padded off into the woods and stayed in solitude till he had forgotten what humanity was and found the instinctive actions of animals and woodland beast calming and familiar.

* * *

"Ni," Yugito told him one day, "I'm thirteen."

"I know that," he replied, "I was sealed in you five years ago." Stretching his body, he felt his joints click and gave a small yawn. Yugito watched him with a half moon smile dangling on her face.

"I'm older than the last jinchuuriki."

Turning to meet her dark eyes, he gave his cheshire cat smile, "Raki never could take the training." The smile was forced. He had liked Raki, that little scamp. Of course, Raki had only been a child, a little boy who had come from a good family and unlike Yugito had been papered and loved. The anbu training, the torture, the forced release of Matatabi had just hurt him and scarred him mentally. Eventually, Raki had thrown himself into the Mei River one morning against Matatabi's protestations. His lone body had been mistaken for a log and had floated down until it stopped at the sieve at the village's water processing plant.

"Theyre going to make me take the Chuunin exams," she told him excitedly, "I've never been out of the village before."

Matatabi smiled at her innocence. "Firstly," he told her, "you are a lot stronger than any chuunin in this village." He watched as she flushed with earnest humility, "Secondly, the outside world isn't that great." He thought of Konoha and the green leaves of the village which never existed in the cold and hostile Kumo. Yugito looked so happy though, as happy as the usual calm and controlled Yugito could be.

"I'm going to have a team," she told him, "I've never worked with anyone before." Matatabi laughed, purring with satisfaction at her joy.

"Kid, you don't need a team. We're a team of shinobi teams."

She was assigned to a genin team. Her teammates in Matatabi's honest and completely objective opinion were a couple of snot nosed brats. One of them was named Abe and a lightning user, the other boy was called Kuro, a weakling, a medic nin who fought with needles. Fucking needles. What the hell did those do if most people could dodge them. He almost hissed with indignance when Yugito was forced to fight with Abe as part of the training exercise. He almost howled in anger when the idiot boy proclaimed that he could beat Yugito with ease.

Then Yugito ended the match in less than two minutes with her cat claws which passed through his lightning technqiue with ease and left him with scratches on his body and three sharp knives to his throat. And Matatabi laughed and howled with laughter in his cage so loud that he could feel his emotions rattle against Yugito's ribcage and feel the smile creeping on her face.

On the five day journey Konoha, Matatabi felt Yugito's fists clench and her face contort into its typical Anbu mask, emotionless and expressionless as she ignored the jibes from Abe. And worst of all the claims and assertations that he would make chuunin. It was fucking ridiculous. The jounin leading them, Mie, was decent enough. A calm and practical woman, she laughed at Abe and told him to shut up whilst quietly encouraging meek Kuro. For Yugito, she was a lot more tactful.

"Yugito chan," she had told the girl one of the nights they had spent on the journey to Konoha, "you are a powerful child, just remember your teammates." Yugito silently nodded and returned back to her teammates, slipping back to her instinctive position next to Kuro. The dark haired boy saw the look of irritation on her face and quietly handed her his bar of chocolate.

"You're pretty impressive," he murmurred, watching her downcast eyes, "the way you fight." They sat in silence as Abe snored next to them in fitful sleep.

I think you've made your first friend kid. Matatabi told her later, grinning when she flushed.

"Shut up Ni," she retorted indignantly, "you're my first friend." Matatabi smiled and purred, Yugito laughed at him, her voice tinkling like chimes. Reaching through the flames, she ruffled his fur.

* * *

The first test in his honest and objective opinion was completely ridiculous. Instead of being held in an open space where the genin were allowed to fight one another to the death, they were instead cooped into a claustrophobic little space and expected to spy on one another for answers. For Matatabi who had lived in an era where stealth was completely overrated and informatino could easily be obtained by maiming and killing, this test was absolute bullshit.

"Kid, this is stupid." He yawned, curling into himself in his little space.

"Well, we still have to go through it." Yugito retorted, looking for an opening. She waited as Abe passed by her table. From his hand and on to the table emerged a little white capsule. As subtly as she could Yugito opened the capsule and read the Kanji scrawl Abe had written.

"This is pathetic Yugito, why couldn't you be good at genjutsu?" laughed Matatabi.

"Well Ni, why couldn't you be good at genjutsu?"

The second test was slightly more appropriate. Yugito and her team were led to a gate which led to a large forest. It was so Konohan, it almost made Matatabi laugh, towering trees which stared down at the genin. This was the Konohan version of a horror movie, if they could make one. They had to steal another scroll from another team in other to pass this test. This was going to be a breeze, he smirked and could feel the smugness emanating from his host until Ame announced.

"We'll hit the next team, I'll lead the attack."

Rolling his eyes, the same way his host was, Matabi laughed with derision. Yugito however agreed with him. "Alright, Abe we will follow your lead."

"Kid, are you seriously letting that brat going to kill himself?"

"He'll be a distraction Ni," she smiled, "we'll get through this."

She was right. Abe was a damn good distraction. Jumping out of the trees he had attempted to take on a three man squad by himself. The three Kiri nin had immediately rounded upon him, brandishing their katanas and rounding upon had thrown his electric wires at them and attempted to electrocute them into submission but the figures he had thrown his weapons at merely dissolved into puddles of water.

"Fuck." screamed Abe as the water suddenly solidified and around him were icicles which acted as bars. Attempting to struggle free, he pushed his weight against one of the bars and his face contorted in pain as he felt his skin sliced by the sharp bars. The Kiri nin now surrounded him.

The kiri nin smirked, "give us the scroll now or we'll fuck you over." Waving his katana towards the young boy, he strode closer and closer towards the boy whose forehead was now covered with a sheen of sweat. The image on his face was obvious, a look of death was plastered on his face.

Yugito rose from her seat next to Kuro on the tree. It was time. Lightly, she jumped from the platform, landing lightly on her haunches in front of Abe.

"Look, more fresh meat." The Kiri nin laughed mercilessly and charged at her.

Matatabi could feel her growing excitement and the chakra pooling at the bottom of her stomach as it was pooling in his. She opened her mouth and he felt the rush of chakra and heat as fire rushed out of her mouth and engulfed the nin. The fire grew more intense and Matatabi gladly agreed to her request for more chakra and let loose the blue flames which burned eternal. When the fire finally stopped pouring out of the mouth, Yugito was out of breath and the Kiri nin all lay comatose on the floor. The icicles which had held Abe had finally melted.

"I'll search them, Kuro please help Abe." Kuro leaped from his post and landed next to Abe. She leant to the comatose Kiri shinobi and checked their jackets. Next to her, Abe sat in shock and fear while Kuro gently chided him, holding him still whilst he attempted to close the flowing and open wound.

"Yugito," Abe muttered, addressing his teammate, "that was brilliant." He cleared his throat and jolted as Kuro's medical ninjutsu finally touched the nerves of his wound. "But I'll be better than you one day." The declaration of admiration that came from him was enough, Yugito nodded severely, offering a small uncomfortable smile as recompense.

Abe gave her a vivacious grin.

"Second friend made in two weeks eh kid. Aren't you popular?" The two tails smirked, baring his teeth in his amusement.

"I know right Ni."

The third round was brutal. Kuro could not hold was matched up against a masked Konohan boy with grey hair and darker eyes. His needles never stood a chance, as soon as they were thrown the grey haired boy had already reached him. Two sharp punches to his face and he was out like a light. The Konohan boy did not seem to realize this as he continued to pummel the boy with sharp and precise punches and kicks to every inch of the boy's body. It was morbidly beautiful in its bloodlust.

"Fuck, Kuro!" Abe lept off the second floor into the fighting ring. "Fuck you, you Konohan shit." He let loose his lightning abilities, shooting off sparking kunai towards the grey haired boy. The konohan genin retreated, though successfully ducking all attack.

"Stop it," Mie appeared next to him. Grabbing his arm, she twisted it behind his ear.

Abe squirmed, "Sensei..."

"Shut up and stop being so foolhardy." She snapped, giving a slight nod to the Konohan boy, she slung Kuro on her back and slipped back up to the balcony.

Abe stood to the side of the balcony, his hand clenched next to his body, teeth gritted. "Konohan nin are fucking vicious bastards," he snarled with clenched teeth, "I'll kill them all."

Yugito looked at him calmly, "Stop being so emotional," she told him, "this does nothing, Kuro just wasn't good enough."

"How dare you." Abe glared at her.

Yugito stared back at him with calm dark eyes, "it's the truth, eat or be eaten."

"Kid, that was uncalled for," Matatabi told her, his voice echoing in the recesses of her mind, "he's just a brat.

Yugito stood silent and strong on the balcony, "I'm just a brat too." she muttered to no one in particular, knowing that Matatabi could hear her.

Abe won his round, quickly he incapacitated a terrified looking Sand genin who wielded a small little yoyo like weapon. Scoffing and without breaking a sweat, he returned to his team to congratulations by Mie. Yugito remained silent, Kuro remained slumped unconscious on the floor.

When they chose her to fight against the little Iwa boy, Yugito didn't even smile. Not a glimpse of smugness was seen from her, all discarded for cool professionalism.

"Kid," he voiced from inside her, "don't sulk."

She ignored him, what a brat. Matatabi rolled his eyes.

The Iwa boy looked gave her a mocking look. A small thin boy with stringy blonde hair, his face was streaked with what seemed to be blue paint, he looked to her and gave her an insincere smile. Yugito merely stared him down.

"Begin."

The Iwa boy let loose a series of small complicated hand seals and a something akin Yugito noted the spikes that began appearing from the ground at her feet. Jumping into midair, she took a breath and made a series of her own hand seals. At the last seal, the sign of the dragon, she opened her hands. A ball of fire exploded through the room and blew open the roof of the arena.

"Canyon carver," she muttered as bits of tiles and cement fell like snow upon the arena. The hokage looked at her in shock, lifting his hat to inspect the damage. On the floor of the arena, buried under a large bit of the ceiling lay her opponent, his face burnt by her flames and his arm mangled by the rubble created.

"Winner of the match; Yugito Nii."

Amidst the confusion and horror of her attack, she quietly took her place by the side of her sensei. Kuro was still asleep on the floor.

"Nice one kid. You should have seen their faces when you blew a hole in the ceiling." Matatabi grudgingly told her after the matches were over.

"Ni," she returned, sitted cross legged in front of him, her face buried in her hands, "I was a real bitch today right?"

"Yeah you were." Matatabi raised his face towards her, hoping to offer an iota of sympathy towards his host.

"He was my friend and I stood by and let him get beat." Her body was slumped, her golden hair lay covering her body like a shroud.

Matatabi proded her with his paw and nosed her, rubbing his large face against her little body. "Kid, sometimes we all are a bit of a bitch inside. Doesn't mean we're bad people." Yugito's hands once again curled against his fur and he felt her arms attempt to surround his body in an awkward hug.

"Thanks Ni."

"Anyday kid." he told her with as much civility and sentimentality a tailed beast could master.

* * *

The final round of the Chuunin exams was interesting to say the least. Yugito had been paired with a boy from the sands with the surname Akasuna. Puppet masters, he had told her, little fucking bastards who make dead people into their dolls. Yugito had almost laughed with joy.

"Dead bodies burn," she told him, smiling with glee.

In the ring, she had let loose fire ball after fire ball which she attempted to burn to a crisp his little toys. The boy merely evaded her, sending wave after wave of puppets after her. Suddenly she slipped and behind her a puppet appeared.

"Fucking hell kid, what just happened." Matatabi cried as he felt her body slam into the back of a puppet. He felt her irritation and imagined the frown which would have contorted her face.

"The puppets are coated with some anti-flammable chemical, that's the only possiblity," she replied, her hands could hardly move in the claustrophobic space, "but I don't think they are coated inside with it." She opened her mouth and took a breath.

The puppet exploaded into a ball of flame. And out of the carcass of the pupper, Yugito climbed out. She smiled in delight at the puppeteer's shocked face. The nails of her hands extended with the adrenaline, blue chakra suddenly emanated from the sillhouette of her nails. This was the first stage of jinchuuriki release and Yugito loved it, the release of control thrilled her, the remaining control she had over herself and her body comforted her. Weaving in and out through the attacking puppets with feline grace, she ran towards the puppeteers with an army of puppets snapping behind her.

Slam. Her nails cut through the soft wood of a puppet as it came to close and when she reached her mark. She smiled slashing her nails into his soft underbelly.

Sand. Sand fell to the floor instead of blood.

"Shit." she muttered as she retreated before any chakra strings could catch her. Calm yourself, Nibi told her. Yugito's eyes ran over the battlefield. Puppets as far as the eye could see, such that even the puppeteer was a mere marionette. Where could one hide in such a situation? Where.

She concentrated her chakra. Deep breath in and she breathed out, a tongue of fire licked the ground and suddenly a whole globe of fire emerged from her mouth burning the ground underneath her feet. Bit by bit it scorched, till one could see the metallic glint of the waterpipes which ran underneath the stadium. Running out of breath, she stopped. The puppets all one by one began to fall like leaves on to the bottom of the bowl she had just created, thumping against the top of the waterpipe, surrounding the little red haired boy who had been their master.

She emerged from the match a chuunin. Abe grudgingly congratulated and later declared his superiority to eyerolls from both his sensei and Kuro. Kuro gave her a smile and a hug.

"Congratulations Yugito chan." He smiled at her, his pale skin gleaming against his black hair.

"Ah Kuro, I was wondering who did I replace on the team?" she looked at him in the eye, forcing him to stare back at her. "Two people teams with a sensei don't just appear out of nowhere," she explained.

Kuro's smile stiffened and slowly deflated into a limp smile. "Raki," he answered, "you replaced Raki. It was my fault, he tried to save me." He looked at the girl's level face. "He was why I decided to become chuunin, so I would no longer be useless."

"I see Kuro-san," she replied, her tone becoming excessively formal, "I'm sorry." She apologized for both the question and the guilt from before.

Kuro smiled at her again, "it's not your fault Yugito chan, sometimes life happens."

As they took the traditional chuunin exam team photo with Yugito wearing her new headband and the heavy flak jacket. Yugito couldn't help but to observe the Abe's protective stance, in front of Kuro's meeker one. This was brotherhood, she told herself, but unfortunately this would not be her team. Matatabi heard her and gave a soft whine, nudging her with a soft paw.

* * *

When she returned to Kumo, they immediately reassigned her. They gave her a mask, it had the face of a cat on it.

"Baset," the Anbu told her, "it's the face of a cat god from ancient times."

"That's bloody cliche yo!" a large dark man suddenly appeared from behind her, slapping the mask out of the hands of the Anbu who had given it to her. "You go get my girl over here a better mask." The Anbu glided off, "With some originality!" the man called after him.

"B" He answered her unasked question, "Killer B."

"The jinchuuriki?" she asked, feeling a stirring of kinship in her being.

"You say it like it's a dirty word." He replied with mirth in his voice but not in his eyes. The dark bands around his arms made him look more like a mercenary and the eight blades which hung on his back seemed to fit him like a glove. "It's okay Miss prissy, I'm not going to partner you for this one. I work alone yo."

She nodded, looking at him with condescension. He seemed so carefree for a jinchuuriki, almost as if this entire business was a game and not about his life.

"You're a real bitch, you know, Miss Prissy?" he told her, smirking.

"Ah, yes I am." she replied before tuning out the rest of his insinuations.

* * *

The Anbu gave her a new mask. This time it had the face of a dog on it. It made Matatabi hiss in disgust.

"Anubis," they told her, "God of death."

She preferred the cliche version to the original and somewhat sarcastic contention to Killer B's mounted the face upon her own, feeling the mask's features bleed into her the familiar black hood, she pulled back her blonde hair into a braid.

"What are we doing?" Matatabi asked.

"We're gong to kill a village." She replied levelly, there was something in her voice which caused him to remain in his crouched position, silent as ever, watching his host, struggling with the ethical decision.

It wsa a village near Sand. The secretive nature of the village, similar to the way Sand operated made newcomers a relatively normal sight. Still the black hood and mask that Yugito wore, made her stand out, it branded her an official character, though painting her to be part of sand culture. It was night when she arrived, the moon was high in the sky and some people made their way through the villge to the local bar. Yugito made her way to the bar.

"Level three transformation Ni," She told him before releasing the breaks which hindered his power. The flood gates unlocked and chakra filled her being. Fire poured from her hands and filled the entrance of the bar, she could hear the drunken slur of confusion in the pub when they smelled the smoke. She moved on.

Together, they torched each house and each building. A little tornado of fire, hurtling through the village on a quest of destruction. For those who managed to flee, Yugito appeared behind them, claws outstretched and willing. One by one, like the character her mask had been painted after, she killed all the survivors, till all that was left was the metallic tang of blood in the air and ash.

Her own cloak was wet with blood.

"Why did you have to kill them kid?" Matatabi asked lazily. Human lives no longer meant much to a creature who had lived over millenia and had no possibility of dying.

"I don't know Ni," she replied her voice cold and laced with ice, "they just told me to."

She returned from the mission and was thanked by the Anbu squad leader. Nodding silently, she accepted his thanks and left the wretched complex.

"Hey," the familiar coarse sounding voice called after her, "how was the killing?"

Killer B emerged from the complex, striding out to meet her. She stared up at the man who towered over her.

"It was fine." She replied, forcing her voice to remain level.

"Sure kid," the man rolled his eyes, "it'll take time to tune out the pain. Just remember that sometimes to feel that pain is a good thing." Yugito frowned at the somewhat level and incredibly applicable advice the man had given her. "If you need any advice, just go to the waterfall." He told her.

"Sure," she shot back, "but I don't think Matatabi likes Gyuki very much." The ringing laughter of the eighth jinchuuriki filled her ears and she managed to force a meek smile to return his amusement.

"You're an interesting brat," Killer B told her as a parting shot as he walked away.

Matatabi grinned mischievously, "you are an interesting brat." he repeated to her, laughing at her indignance.

"Shut up," she retorted, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah I know, you're not a brat anymore, you're a young woman, having completed such a hard mission." He laughed, purring.

"Maybe finally part of the village,"she replied, touching the band she wore around her neck.


End file.
